2013-06-09 - London Ditchling Devil 200km Audax

It's also our first one too;

It's not only I and John's first Audax, but also John first Century ride.

I always rode with him a lots and we work pretty well together, so it make sense to go to the Ditchling Devil Audax.

We planned on starting at 7:30 as we didn't want to join the mass start, the simple reason to ride at a comfortable pace rather than keeping up with the group, can be a little tiring on the first couple of hours before getting your legs.

Despite being overtaken quite a handful of time, we were enjoying the ride from Wimbledon to Turner Hill as it was a lovely if cold morning (note to self - buy arm warmer), after the first checkpoint and the breakfast, we joined some of the riders who overtook us, it was actually a lots more sociable than I thought it would be, beside one bloke commenting on I using "balloon" tyres on such ride at the Windmill, it was nice to be able to relax on such ride.

We were really enjoying the ride and John were a little surprised that Ditchling wasn't particularly hard (Tongdean Lane to Devil Dykes after riding down took us by surprise), the calamities of the others grew and the journey back to London doesn't feel like a chores anymore, each checkpoint gave us just enough time to recuperated, make a big difference compared to the forum ride of which tend to be non-stop.

Left Wimbledon at 7:30, got signed at Chiddingfold at half 3, a rather respectful time with just 35 miles to go, John and I like to have a little bit of a challenge by trying to complete it in under 10 hours.

Disaster strike.

John knees, both his dodgy knees blew up, in the metaphorical sense, I dropped out of the main group and rode with John all the way to Richmond, we're in it together, would be rather rude to ditch him at that point.
It took us almost 4 hours to do the mere 35 miles, the fact we thought the pub was on the north side of Richmond Park (on a road also called King's Road) mean we lost 45 minutes having a quick lap of the park before resorting to the pub, as if we decided to do a couple of hill before turning back to the correct road.

it seemed that there's a recurring pattern that after a Century, you're just running on fume trying to get to the destination, food and drink no longer motivate you but the signpost saying "Kingston" does, the last 25 miles seemed to go on forever compared to the first 25 that somehow disappear before we noticed it.